A large number of energy management devices for use with vehicle safety belt systems have been proposed, but most of these devices have not been adopted commercially for a number of reasons. One reason is cost in that the pieces used to dissipate the energy have been numerous and complex thereby adding significantly to the cost of the seat belt system. Alternatively, these devices have required or would require significant changes in the current retractor design that would result in substantial costs, if adopted. Another factor is a size limitation. Retractors are often mounted in a vehicle's trim or other locations where only a very limited amount of space is available for the retractor, and hence, the addition of a large and cumbersome energy management device is impractical for applications where limited space is available. In addition to being too costly and too large, a proposed energy management devices may have inconsistent or unpredictable results. This makes it difficult to adapt the system to change the forces actually experienced under dynamic testing conditions in which the energy is dissipated in 100 milliseconds or less. Often such devices rely on tearing of metal sheets or pulling a wide bolt through a narrow slot energy dissipation. It is preferable that the energy management system provide a consistent force and energy dissipation characteristic so that the devices can be tuned to give the desired results under dynamic testing. Also, the energy management devices should be effective in significantly lowering belt loads applied to the occupant and the safety belt hardware, lowering the chest G's experienced by an occupant, lowering the HIC (head injury criteria) numbers, and providing improved occupant performance in crash events to try to achieve a restraint system with a five-star rating. Thus, there is a need for a low-cost, energy management system that meets these difficult criteria.